Our belief that all students can be artists is actually an idea about personal growth and process. Creative thinking, self-expression, and encountering the challenges of an art form empower students to be creative and confident in all areas of life. Milton challenges students to develop and to apply their skills at a high level in the many visual arts courses. We ask each student to “see more,” to think creatively, to apply energy to expressing ideas, to grow from criticism, and to expect that virtually every piece of work will be exhibited. No student can “speak” clearly or dramatically without learning visual language. At Milton, beauty and truth are not abstractions but rather the raw material for artistic expressions—in the traditional forms of drawing, painting, or sculpture, or in the contemporary terms of digital photography or architectural design. Our students ask and answer important questions about themselves and their world, and art is the tool that they use.
Visit the exhibits page for information on upcoming shows.
Letting Loose: Art by Wendy Seller
The Nesto Gallery welcomes a new exhibit this week. In Letting Loose: Digital Collages, Wendy Seller uses graphic design software to layer paintings with elements of existing imagery.
“Ms. Seller’s work is based on assembling fragments of historical art paintings and reconfiguring them,” says art faculty member and Nesto Gallery director, Anne Neely. “In discovering parts of paintings, she takes them out of their setting and creates new meaning for them in more contemporary ways.”
A professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms. Seller has exhibited her work across the United States and overseas. She has also been published in Boston Globe Magazine and the New York Times.
To welcome the artist and her work, Milton will host an opening reception on Tuesday, February 7, in the Nesto Gallery from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The Gallery is located on the lower level of the Art and Media Center. The exhibit will run through March 6.
Visit wendyseller.com to learn more about the artist.
Isabel Chun ’14 Illustrates a New Children’s Book
Isabel Chun (III) has illustrated her first, published children’s book. Her childhood love of painting ultimately led her to this project. Isabel’s vivid and colorful illustrations appear in The Kwik Adventures of Baxter Brave and Tommy the Salami, the story of a young boy who sets off with his dog from the high-rise buildings of Hong Kong for an around-the-world adventure. Traversing four chapters—The Desert, The Ocean, The Jungle and The Mountains—the duo encounter storms, beautiful landscapes, and a variety of animals that help them along the way.
“My favorite chapter to work on was The Jungle, but my favorite illustration is the starry sky that appears in the desert chapter,” says Isabel.
The book contains nearly 100 illustrations, each artfully created by Isabel’s hand. Each illustration was formed in two parts: an ink drawing, which provided the outline, and a watercolor element that filled in the color and texture. Isabel scanned both portions into a computer and merged the two in Photoshop, creating vibrant images that reflect a child’s sense of whimsy.
“The part I most enjoyed was combining the watercolor and ink and seeing the result. The most challenging part of the process was learning how to tell a story through art. This was my first experience with this challenge, and I had to figure out what perspectives would appeal to children.”
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Nesto Gallery Alive with the Kinetic Sculptures of Anne Lilly
Sculptor Anne Lilly uses carefully engineered motion to shift and manipulate our perception of time and space. Constructing precise and interactive sculptures, which move in fluid and mesmeric ways, she elicits connections between external physical space and the viewer’s private, psychological domain.
“Each piece utilizes the direct touch of the viewer to impart energy and initiate movement,” Ms. Lilly describes. “I fabricate the work in stainless steel. Stainless is a cold, hard, impersonal material, and I like pressing these qualities against the warm and sensuous response of the work.”
Anne Lilly has created public artworks for the City of Boston, and in 2010 she was nominated for the Foster Prize of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Her work was included in the 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition and is held in corporate and private collections internationally.
Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe writes, “Anne Lilly’s captivating stainless steel sculptures…are so intricately engineered they appear to do magic. Tall rods rising from cylinders planted on gears rush toward each other, bowing, then fall away in one fluid motion. Rotating grills look like they’ll collide, then they miraculously pass. The movement of each sparely designed piece is full of grace and surprise.”
Ms. Lilly’s Nesto Gallery exhibit, Nimbus: Recent Sculptures, opened on December 6 and continues through January 20.
